A celebration of London's bridges is the largest art exhibition ever to be staged at the Museum of London Docklands.

Drawing on the museum’s significant art collections, Bridge, which opens on June 27th, will feature rarely seen contemporary and historical artworks, alongside photography and film to illustrate the significance of bridges within London’s landscape.

From Hungerford to Blackfriars, Westminster and Millennium, Bridge it also looks at how London’s bridges allow people to move around and experience the city. It explores how bridges influence a visual sense of the city and provide a source of inpiration for artists and photographers.

Highlights from the museum's own collection include a Whistler etching of Old Westminster Bridge from 1859, a glass negative photo of Tower Bridge from 1910, to more modern exhibits like Ewan Gibbs's linocut called London.

Film maker William Braban has made a series of films inspired by the Thames. They include the 1986 feature-length Thames Film. His film Beating the Bridges is featured in the exhibition.

For the first time visitors to the museum will be able to see a rare picture from 1845 when photography was in its infancy. The image of Old Hungeford Bridge taken by pioneering photographer William Fox Talbot is the oldest photo inthe museum's collection. It shows work under way on Brunel's bridge in the year it opened.

The museum's curator Francis Marshall said: I'm incredibly excited that visitors will have the opportunity to get up close to such a significant early photograph - taken at the time the medium was still evolving."

There are even photos taken inside London Bridge on display. Photographer Lucinda Grange managed to get access inside the structure for some amazing shots.

Of the exhibition Mr Marshall said: "London's bridges give a view of the capital impossible to appreciate from its jumbled medieval street plan. Most of the time we are in a jumble of streets and the city reveals itself in fragments. On a bridge, however, the full iconic panorama is laid out."